Trans Minister Alex McNeill on Trans Survival and Trans Flourishing
Dan is on vacation this week, so we are happy to present Brad's interview with Rev. Alex McNeill, which is part of the special series ONE NATION ALL BELIEFS.
Rev. McNeill is a white, queer, transgender man, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Rev. McNeill served as the executive director of More Light Presbyterians for over eight years. There, he empowered faith leaders to welcome LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC neighbors into worship communities and to advocate for justice in their broader secular communities. Alex has worked to elect LGBTQIA+ leaders, advocated for reproductive justice, and won state, national, and denominational legislation affirming and protecting the rights and dignities of queer and trans people. Before earning a Master’s of Divinity from Harvard University, Alex got his start in LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights activism as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
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Welcome back.
Straight White American Jesus.
And we're still here.
The Summit for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C.
And we have the chance now to talk to Reverend Alex McNeils.
So I'm going to tell everyone about you in a minute.
First of all, Reverend, thanks for being here.
Thank you.
It's an honor.
So let me tell you, tell everyone listening about you.
You're on the Faith Advisory Council at AU.
You're an ordained Presbyterian minister, the first openly trans person to head a Presbyterian organization.
You have over a decade of experience in the ministry.
A white, queer, transgender man who has a master's of divinity from Harvard and focused on LGBTQ plus and reproductive rights in the church.
Director, executive director of More Light Presbyterians.
And we're going to get into all the work that kind of happens at More Light here in a second.
And there's even been a documentary that's kind of chronicled your journey and that's called Out of Order.
So there's a lot there and we're going to try to get as much as we can in here in a little bit of time.
When you came out as queer and Presbyterian, the Presbyterian Church had a prohibitive amendment excluding openly gay and lesbian people from ordination.
How did you keep your commitment and your calling to faith and ministry even though your church failed to acknowledge your humanity?
Yeah, great question.
So, it seems like forever ago.
It was year 2000, as I was recognizing my sexuality and my sense of calling to the church.
I grew up moving around as a kid, a lot of different places, but a First Presbyterian Church was always where we found our way to church.
And so, the church became my home away from home.
And what I realized in terms of my calling to ministry is that the church had been a home for me and I wanted to help it feel like a home for other people.
And it really took recognizing that I actually didn't believe in a straight white Jesus.
That while many of the folks who surrounded me in my hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, Believed in a straight white Jesus and wished I would too.
Actually, it wasn't Jesus that was against me as a queer person.
That in many respects, Jesus was on my side and advocating for marginalized folks to be at the center of God's kingdom.
And once I realized that, I realized that the church was wrong for its laws against LGBTQ folks at the time.
And I remember, not so humbly, at 18, declaring that if the church wouldn't ordain openly gay and lesbian folks, I was going to be the first.
And that took me into college and then seminary and realizing it was 2008 and the law still hadn't changed, that I could Start working to change this, that I loved the church too much to let it off the hook for discrimination.
And so that's when I got involved in my journey of really working at this intersection of trying to change laws and policies to be more inclusive.
I'm really thankful what has kept me in that journey for so long was the love and support of family, friends, and my home church.
That what I realized is while the laws were wrong, individual congregations could be a place of sanctuary, could be a place of support.
And that's what led me into organizing congregations and people of faith to be that wave of support to help change laws and policies so the church can officially reflect who the people are and who is God's will.
It's beautiful.
I mean, it's beautiful to hear you talk about it in that way.
And the love you have for the church and for those congregations is clear in your voice.
And I guess there are going to be people listening who I think have general outlines of what's happened in the Presbyterian Church in the 20 years since then.
Would you mind giving us just a brief snapshot into what has happened?
But also, I think more importantly, what is it you hope will continue to happen within the Presbyterian Church moving forward in the next decade?
So to be specific, we're talking about the Presbyterian Church USA.
And in 1997, there had been a long history of questions about whether gay and lesbian people could be ordained to ministry.
In 1997, a restrictive amendment was put into our church's constitution, the Book of Order, that explicitly, specifically prohibited.
openly gay and lesbian people from being ordained.
And that moment was really devastating.
So I'm coming out in 2000.
My pastor, who supported me as a queer person, as someone who was feeling called to seminary, sat me down and said to me, I don't know if this law is going to change in his lifetime.
He's like, I hope it changes in your lifetime.
I didn't realize at the time that had just been three years for him to go from hopefulness to devastation.
And over the next 13 years, groups like more like Presbyterians and others joined together to try and change this restrictive policy.
There was a major there were two instances of we have to put it to a national vote of the Presbyterians, the regional governing bodies across the country.
And win by 51%.
So you can be a political nerd and a Presbyterian, too.
And there have been two failed attempts.
One was in 2008 as I'm finishing seminary and into 2009, which really got me involved in this work to say, actually, I got to get off my butt, basically, and help organize.
And then the one that actually changed the policy was in 2010.
Then it went out to the Presbyteries and was voted by a Astounding margin, way more than 50%.
Yes, we want to change the laws.
That went into effect in 2011.
And then I joined the staff of More Light Presbyterians as executive director in 2013.
I'm actually no longer their executive director, but for eight years, I led that national organization.
And in 2014 and 2015, change language to allow pastors to marry same-sex couples and our Constitution to say marriage is between two people, which was a shift away from a heterosexual exclusive definition of marriage.
And then in 2018, we expanded to add trans Language around trans people.
There was no mention of trans people really anywhere in anything Presbyterian, so it was a nice gray area where trans folks maybe could skate through, but the problem was there was no way for the church as an official body to speak out against anti-trans legislation, which was really ramping up around that time too, 2018.
So when the church kind of General Assembly voted to add provisions that names trans folks as included, first of all, cherished, protected, was a really big deal in terms of the evolution of the church.
And what I'm really impressed with is over the eight years that I served as executive director of Moral Light Presbyterians, we started as sort of like a rabble-rousy group, like we were the French.
And I loved that.
But also, we gained so many supporters, churches voting to become members of more like we tripled our member churches by the end there.
And it's still going.
It's a wonderful organization.
But by the end of 2021, it was almost unrecognizable in the sense that Even with everything regressive that's happening in our state houses and nationally, what I knew is that the PCUSA was never going to go backwards on their commitments to inclusion.
That's incredible.
I mean, there's so many things in my head I want to ask, but I think one of them is so many Americans are used to a default image of the Christian, of the church, as the conservative white Christian nationalist, the evangelical, whatever may be.
And they associate that identity, that person, with homophobia, with queer phobia, with transphobia.
We also, in the last two years, have seen an even further acceleration of anti-trans bills and other movements.
What specifically does the church have to offer when it comes to the American public square and helping, as you just said, within the church to protect, cherish, and nurture trans folks?
How does it offer something beyond the church in the public square?
That's a great question, and I want to tell a short story that changed my thinking.
In 2016, I and my partner moved back to North Carolina from D.C.
As a trans person partnered, I was tired of shouting at my computer screen for change and wanted to work for change in the South, in my home state, to further protections for LGBTQ folks.
Two weeks after we moved, North Carolina passed House Bill 2, which effectively regulated trans folks' access to bathroom facilities and a host of other horrible things.
And it's like 2016, pre-election.
I get scared.
Like, what is North Carolina going to be like?
How is this backlash going to play out across our state?
I feared for trans youth's lives in particular.
And right away, almost the moment that bill went into effect, churches came out of the woodwork calling me and saying, um, We have a gender-neutral bathroom.
Can we keep it?
Yes.
You are not regulated by this law, which is sort of the nice thing about church-state separation is that you actually aren't having to be governed by this.
And so not only can you offer a spiritual witness to the value of trans lives, you can conform your spaces, your sanctuaries, to offer a vision of what trans inclusion tangibly looks like.
And I think that is a powerful witness to the larger Country, when so many folks are afraid of trans people in their bathrooms, on their sports teams, in their classrooms, where we have Sunday school classes with trans youth at the center.
We have, you know, restroom facilities that are non-gendered.
I think our church spaces can actually be a witness, in addition to our theological thinking, to project an image of what a beautiful tapestry of diversity can look like.
in our spaces of worship and that that doesn't threaten anyone's well-being.
And I think that's how we can try and help folks who are on the fence about whether these bills are a good idea realize that another vision is possible.
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I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
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Just so much, just amazing stuff there.
Thank you for sharing that story.
I'm wondering if you have another story or maybe a number of stories about folks who have found an unexpected refuge in the church in the ways that you're talking about.
So that you just talked about the space being a place that witnesses to God's loving inclusion.
What are the stories of folks coming to churches like the ones you're discussing and realizing that this is the place I'm safe and love the most?
Perhaps in ways I never expected as a trans person, queer person, and so on.
Thank you for that ask, because...
Part of the work we did at More Light was helping churches name clearly and explicitly that they are affirming of LGBTQ folks.
And every time they did, because of course, the assumption is that they're not.
And so when you fly your rainbow flag or have in the bulletin that you're a welcoming space, then families come out of the woodwork.
Youth come out of the woodwork to tell the truth about who they are and recognizing that their pastor And their church governance is going to support them.
And so all over the country, I used to travel so much and talk in so many church basements about being a trans person of faith.
And what I loved about that was afterwards, The dads, the youth, the newly out trans person who had found their faith community here would come up to me and tell me how meaningful it was that this space was the place they felt safe, that they could be their full selves.
Maybe it was the first space that they tried on women's clothing for the first time and wore it to church and felt safe enough to walk down the center aisle of the sanctuary and sit in their designated favorite pew the first time that they felt like they could change their pronouns on their church name tag.
Churches are this holy space to really bring our full selves and when we can offer that The incredible diversity of folks who find themselves represented in church is just a testament to the power of that.
Yeah, it's incredible.
I'm wondering if we can kind of shift to the legislative side and, you know, we're coming up on a couple of years short, we're coming up on a decade of overfell and same-sex marriage.
Wondering how you see the next 10 years going?
Is this a moment of just Do you envision sheer will and defense playing because of the just overwhelming number of anti-trans and anti-queer bills?
Or do you envision moving the goalpost even further beyond Obergefell to a new reality for queer folks legally in the country?
In 20, no, 2012.
I was working with Equality Maryland to add trans folks as protected under their nondiscrimination statewide bill.
It was right after Maryland had voted as one of the four states for marriage equality on the ballot.
Maryland, Maine, Washington, and Minnesota.
So there was a huge air of celebration.
It's, you know, I'm joining them December 2012 and then January 2013, and we're like, hey, by the way, we need to add trans folks to the non-discrimination bill.
And part of our work was to organize and get people to the statehouse and all that good stuff.
And I remember having conversation after conversation with folks who were like, yeah, do we need that?
We just won this huge thing.
I don't know if we need to work on this right now.
It was so demoralizing.
I was only there for a year before joining More Light as executive director.
The next year they got it done, which is great.
But what I learned from that There's something that happens when we win.
And it almost feels like, well, why do we need to add more protections?
And what I'm seeing now is the galvanizing force of seeing the threat made real.
And I hate to give it any kind of Credit for that.
But before when folks were trying to organize around trans inclusion, it's like people didn't even know who trans folks were.
And now I think because of these regressive laws, they've had the inverse effect.
that the conservatives want, which is erasure.
And actually it's more revelation, making it more visible what it means to be trans and showing the broad rainbow of trans folks and what it means to live as a trans person that are bringing people more clearly into why they need to be supportive of trans folks.
So the future, My hope is, yes, we have to keep showing up to beat back against these horribly aggressive bills and recognizing that they're like a virus.
They'll evolve every time they hit a roadblock and they'll probably get worse.
Like, we're in super germ territory.
I got the worst flu ever since we've been, like, away during COVID.
So it's going to get pretty ugly because I think that they're continuing to come up against a wall and a wall and a wall of us saying, absolutely not.
And some places it's going to be passed and it's not great.
And that is terrifying.
But my hope is that because it's galvanizing so many of us, we lost on marriage a ton before Obergefell, but That momentum doesn't get stopped once it gets started.
That's something I've been thinking about so often in the last month is just, there's this fear of losing, right?
There's this fear of, well, what if, what if I don't win the election?
What if I don't?
And, and I think what you just said is such a great reminder, right?
What sets up something like that, that decision that legalizes same sex marriage are just fight after fight after fight before that, where there were setbacks.
They weren't defeats, they were just setbacks.
And I think that's such an important way to view this.
Let me ask you one more question before we run out of time, and that is, I think about you, somebody who's in ministry, somebody who's deeply invested in the church and has just an undying love for the church.
How does separation of church and state matter to you?
I think it's easier for people to think that separation of church and state is an atheist issue.
It's a secular issue.
What does separation of church and state mean for you as somebody in the clergy, somebody who is trans, somebody who is fighting for all of the things we've been discussing today?
I fundamentally believe that we're entitled to our beliefs.
What we're not entitled to is legislating our beliefs on others.
So to me, the separation of church and state is a way, a fundamental way, a foundational way of this country where we really want to work for one nation for everyone.
That's what I'm working towards.
However I get to that belief is Up to me.
And I'll stand alongside anyone who wants to work for healthcare for all.
Wherever the for all is, there is where I want to be.
And it matters less what our individual faith or beliefs are that get us to that point.
Because I think when we fight belief versus belief, and believe me, I've done that for over a decade, trying to help people believe differently within a faith system that's all about beliefs.
But when we fight belief versus belief, there's no winning there.
There's evolution.
People can change, of course.
But if we're not working for the separation of church and state, I think we're trying to change people's beliefs.
And that's not really what we're in the business of.
We're in the business of expanding liberation for more people.
That's great.
Well, just thankful for you sharing your journey, sharing your understanding of the church and the way it can be such a loving, nurturing place for everyone, outlining how these things all relate to the American public square, living in a place of vigilance, but also hope and vision.
So last question is, where can people link up with you and the work you're doing so that they can perhaps contribute or get involved or just find a place that they can belong?
Yes, absolutely.
Well, while I'm no longer at More Like Presbyterians, you can look them up.
There's many churches you can find that will be a safe and brave sanctuary for you to attend.
The work I'm doing now is as a coach of progressive organizations at the Management Center, centering equity, sustainability and results and how we manage well, recognizing that when our progressive nonprofits thrive, our work for movements can move.
So you can find me there.
Okay.
That's incredible.
Well, thank you for joining us.
We hope you have a great weekend here at the Summit and hopefully we can talk to you again as well.
